Well here comes mister math guy, leveling all of my objections and cynicism.

No, sails don’t fall into the ocean when the wind dies to become several hundred pounds of wet nonsense you have to deal with.

What wind speed vs boat speed are you assuming? How likely do you think you’ll have that wind speed directly behind the boat? And how much righting moment do you think the cargo ship has if the wind changed direction?

The wind speed would need to exceed the speed of the ship to have any positive thrust. 25kt ship speed negates a 25kt wind speed. I honestly don’t know what the average wind speed is in these shipping lanes but I suspect it’s going to be a problem at least part of the time.

It. Is. Called. A. Spinnaker. They have been around for centuries.

If it works, great. But it’s only working when going downwind, right?

They pull in the sail and use their engines. Possibly it can be trimmed a bit if it’s just off a few degrees. This is intended to reduce the work of the engine, it’s not intended to actually propel the ship on it’s own.

What do they do when they want to go a direction opposite to where the wind is blowing? On a sailboat you can control the sail and tack towards the intended direction, a kite doesn’t have that controllability

Container ships cruise in the mid 20 knot range which would be an issue on it’s own unless they plan to slow them way down

Well, a 5 square meter kitesurfing kite in 20 mph wind will easily generate enough lift to pull you out of the water into the air. So let’s say 100 kg (or 1000 N) of thrust, or 20 kg per square meter. We’re talking about a 1,000 square meter kite here, so that’s 20 metric tons of thrust. This won’t let the cargo ship …

This is not at all like a spinnaker. A spinnaker only works when you’re going downwind. A kite also works in cross-wind and upwind, like a regular sail.

For sure. Especially any advances in sustainable fuel replacements are awesome. Replacing fuels at the pump with carbon-neutral (or reduced-carbon) alternatives is a MUCH better path to reducing CO2 emissions than EVs. Replace the fuel and immediately every existing vehicle will have reduced emissions.

Tall ADV-style bikes with upright seating and lots of legroom are awesome! Especially for tall people. I’m around 6'2", and sportbikes don’t fit me well at all, so I’m loving the ADV bike trend. My current bike is an ‘09 Multistrada 1100S that I put 65K miles on, so I’m idly considering getting something newer in the…

Yeah, sure, guns make things much safer for women in road rage incidents: https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/pregnant-hit-and-run-driver-fatally-shot-in-road-rage-incident-she-allegedly-instigated-florida-police/

The whole point of having a gun is that you don’t have to fear someone physically bigger and stronger than you are. I often wonder why more women don’t carry guns.

Having over-the-air paid software upgrades allows the consumer to have a choice to get something later that was not available at the time of purchase such as enhanced cruise control. That is an actual benefit.

If Steve Jobs is your benchmark, that only proves the opposite of your point. Both Musk and Jobs are absolutely horrible people.

Musk changed one of the dirtiest industries? Are you joking? EVs make for a TINY reduction in CO2 emissions, and cause all kinds of new environmental damage. I will bet that in a couple decades EVs will be viewed as an environmental disaster.

The fact that every automaker is going all-in on EVs is not necessarily a good thing. It very much remains to be seen how much of an environmental disaster EVs end up being (because of the need to mine huge amounts of materials for their batteries - look up some photos of open-pit lithium mines), and they do piss-all…

Eh. “Accident” as propaganda is still not nearly as bad as “Vision Zero” propaganda.